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 Eight
is great! It's good to see your efforts
to learn the piano and Jazz music.
Ready for another lesson? Let's get started.
No
matter where you live in our global community,
there is one set of chords known throughout
the Jazz community as a standard and a staple.
This set of chords, that I am referring to,
is known as "The Blues."
Knowing how to construct and play a set of
"Blues" chords (changes) will be
very important to you in your journey into
Jazz.
"The Blues" are a set of chords
which last for 12 bars and repeats. This set
is repeated until each player in the group
has exhausted their musical ideas during their
solo. The performance of "The Blues"
can be as brief as a few minutes and as long
as a few days. "I've been to a few jam
sessions that have played the same "Blues"
song for 2 days." Several hundred melodies
have been written based on the changes (chords)
for "The Blues." There are also
many chord set variations for "The Blues."
We will study most of the basic variations,
however, keep in mind that there are many
more. When you are playing with other players
for the first time, it takes a few times through
the changes for everyone in the group to settle
into a common set for the song. The one thing
you can count on in "The Blues"
is that it is 12 bars long and will repeat.
Using any root note, the formula for constructing
the most basic set of "Blues" changes
is (beginning with the first measure):
- I-
for 4 bars.
- IV-
for 2 bars.
- I-
for 2 bars.
- V-
for 1 bar.
- IV-
for 1 bar.
- I-
for 1 bar.
- V-
for 1 bar.
Lets see how this looks on the next
page using a root note of C. In other words, let's look at "The Blues"
in the key of C.
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